


i was not born to drown

by aceofdiamonds



Series: is that such a stretch of the imagination? [17]
Category: Gossip Girl, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Crossover, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-24
Updated: 2016-11-24
Packaged: 2018-09-01 20:29:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8637040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aceofdiamonds/pseuds/aceofdiamonds
Summary: He’s been — well, sad, is the only word that comes close. He’s been slow and lethargic one day, antsy and nervous the next, his movements dragging him down like his centre of gravity has shifted to below his knees. At night he huddles close to Blair, his arms wrapped around her, and it would be nice if there wasn’t a tinge of desperateness to it like something awful will happen if he lets go.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this is sadder than the rest of them. i don’t know where this came from. title is from sleep on the floor by the lumineers

 

 

Blair’s not a superstitious woman — she feels she’s got too much common sense for that, you know, what with her wizard husband, and all that. No, she deals with logic, hard facts that can’t be argued with, and positions of the stars that can be explained away don’t fit into that. The fate of her life doesn’t rest on the stars.

That being said, some things are hard to ignore and when she’s knocked out for a week with a virus and Harry is almost killed after a match in a freak attack from an overzealous Dark supporter ten years too late, well, it’s hard to ignore that buzzing in her head telling her things come in threes.

To counter this Blair locks the doors to their Manhattan flat and waves her hand for Harry to fill in the rest with his wards and she holds Isla close and tries not to cry. Like she said, she’s an intelligent woman, but sometimes your nerve system takes a knocking and everything else dissolves so all you’re left with is fear and the safety of your family.

They’re on a self-imposed lockdown until Blair shakes off the last of the virus, Isla has been cleared for contamination, and everything cools down in England — ex-saviour of the world being the target of an assassination attack after a friendly with the Magpies isn’t something the papers are going to shut up about soon. Of course, Harry had said he was fine with going back to practice straight after but Birch had insisted, safety is the priority, and if not Harry’s, then the team’s, and that had got him to agree to a couple of weeks off, because when someone tries to kill you that’s kind of a requirement.

The leaves outside their window are turning crispy brown, dropping to the ground in groups. Isla loves to be stood against the window, arms secure around her waist, and she points to the fluttering colours, gold, bronze, brown, and when Serena comes to visit she laughs delightedly and clenches the gifted leaf in her tiny hand, the crunch an unexpected victory.

Before it ticks over to 4pm and the sun disappears as suddenly as someone flicking off a light, Blair and Isla can spend hours at the window, each pointing to their favourite leaves. Blair’s read a lot of baby books, of toddler books, but she doesn’t know what’s going on in Isla’s head at 16 months old, the sky falling in bits and pieces around her. She supposes she has her mother behind her and that’s all she needs — isn’t that wishful thinking?

“Come on, Is,” Blair murmurs, lifting her daughter off the sill and carrying her over to the kitchen. “Dinner time, hm?”

“Bit early for dinner, isn’t it?” Harry says, rough with sleep, emerging from the bedroom. He rubs his eyes, stretches. Despite the weather outside and the heating hasn’t clicked on yet, he’s shirtless, crease-lines across his torso, skin flushed.

“No!” Isla says vehemently, which would mean something if it wasn’t her favourite word at the moment.

Harry shuffles across to where Blair and Isla are sitting and Blair watches out of the corner of her eye as Harry runs a finger down Isla’s cheek, ruffles her hair, and she catches something that could almost be called a smile, if you were being generous.

He’s been — well, sad, is the only word that comes close. He’s been slow and lethargic one day, antsy and nervous the next, his movements dragging him down like his centre of gravity has shifted to below his knees. At night he huddles close to Blair, his arms wrapped around her, and it would be nice if there wasn’t a tinge of desperateness to it like something awful will happen if he lets go.

Blair understands. She was there when the curse was fired and Harry rolled out of the way in a way only the boy who’s lived a thousand times could. She was there to see the immediate arrest, to watch the crowd build into hysteria, for the seriousness of it to sink in, because she’s still new to this world, eight years in, a world where Death Eaters are locked up and people don’t worry. She was there to see the cold calmness on Harry’s face as he had waved his wand and Blair and Isla were by his side and then someone was shouting “no, you can’t leave” before Blair was holding her breath and tucking Isla in against her, and they were gone, landing on the couch a second later. She understands that Harry is having nightmares that wake her but she’s having them too, flashes where half her life is gone in a bright green light, thoughts where Isla grows up without parents, like Harry, thoughts where this leads to copycats, this fear becomes a new norm.

She understands, but she’s the one out here with their daughter while Harry works through it, and this is where things are different from before. They have a daughter, they have someone who depends on them for everything, and she can’t be dropped for anything.

But at night, when Isla is in bed, the monitor on the table by their bed, Blair rolls to face Harry and she listens and she holds him and they add another day to their tally.

(Hermione had told her once, when they’d both had a bit to drink and secrets spill easier that way, that when they were at school Harry kept everything locked in his chest. Ron and Hermione were his best friends and he told them as much as he could but Hermione always knew there was so much more going on inside his head, particularly during their fifth year, but she was scared to push, scared to push him away. She had said something about not knowing Harry and Blair had said something in return about him being himself around her, that what vows were for, and Hermione had nodded sadly and said she would know, should it ever happen again, how much Harry holds on his shoulders. Blair knows that this is it now. She supposes she should be grateful that he feels safe enough not to hide it, that he trusts her.)

Three days later Blair grows tired of her own voice and the garbled sentences from Isla can only be stretched so far. Her bones are still exhausted from the illness that took her out of commission two weeks ago, and she feels five years older than she did last month, but for them to get past this horror week they need to let some light in, they need to wake up.

On the fourth day she wakes Harry with a kiss on his forehead, hands pushing back the sweaty curls that hide his eyes. He moans a little, opens one eye, and Blair looks inside, deems today one of the better ones. His eyes are clearer than they’ve been and when she kisses him he leans into it, a hand twisting in her hair, more present than he’s been.

“Come on,” Blair whispers, not unlike the way she cajoles Isla into a bath. “Get up, Harry. I’ve made plans.”

“No leaving —" he starts to say, but she cuts him off, hand on his shoulder. He looks at her hand on his skin like he’d forgotten she could do that.

“No leaving,” she agrees. “Get dressed. We’ll be in the living room.”

Blair hasn’t been a child for a long time, some would say even longer than most, her head full of things beyond her years, but even she knows the power of distraction in the form of simple games.

She gets Isla to make a game of it, what would daddy like to do best now he’s out of his bed? Would he like Twister? Or Monopoly? Or cards? Blair’s never cared much for any of them but she feels helpless as Harry flounders in his own head and he likes Muggle things like this. Isla helps as much as she can to spread out blankets on the floor, settling after a few moments in a fluffy pillow Blair suspects Victoire snuck in last time she visited. The lights are dim, candles spotting around the room, and Blair would find the whole set-up overly kitschy and nauseatingly sweet if she wasn’t relying on it so much. She knows that Harry, as romantic and fantastical as he is, won’t be miraculously cheered by this but Blair wants to do what she can to stop him spending his days in a cocoon. This is her evidence that they’re all still living, that life goes on, and that’s what he needs.

“Book?” Isla asks, holding up two of her picture books.

Blair nods, reaches out for one to open and read. “Maybe. Are you going to --?”

But before she finishes Isla lifts her arms in the air, book forgotten, looks towards the door. Blair looks over her shoulder to see Harry padding across the floor towards them, hoodie hanging off his shoulders and feet bare.

He settles beside them, raises an eyebrow at the pillows and blankets but shakes his head and doesn’t say anything. A kiss on Blair’s cheek, quick, before he scoops Isla up, holds her against him. “Was this your idea, Isla?” he asks, balancing her in the bracket of his legs. His voice is light with her, easy, but his shoulders are hunched and when he glances at Blair she catches his eyes, dark and far away.

Isla rests her hand on his cheek, nods seriously. “Playing games,” she says.

“What games should we play?” Harry offers, another look to Blair for guidance, but she leans back on her hands, legs stretched to reach Harry’s foot, and leaves it up to him. He turns back to Isla, exaggerates a frown. “Well, Isla, no offence, but I think your legs are the tiniest bit too small for Twister, right?”

“And Monopoly is maybe best left to someone not wanting to kill themselves with boredom,” Blair suggests, kicking the two boxes to the side.

Isla picks up the remaining box -- it rattles when she shakes it.

“Animal pairs it is,” Harry says, helping Isla open the box and tipping the cards onto the floor.

“My dad used to play something like this with me all the time,” Blair says, helping mess up the pile, turning the cards face down.

“The only card game I’ve played is Exploding Snap,” Harry replies.

“I'll teach you poker one day,” she promises, grin sly when Harry meets her eyes.

He drops down onto one elbow, relaxes a fraction, and he shrugs, a smudge of cocky hovering just there. “If you want to throw your money away, Blair.”

“Thought all you'd played with stupid snap?”

“It's not stupid when you're winning,” he returns, and then, “I’m known for being lucky.”

“Luck has nothing to do with it,” and she means everything.

Harry rolls his head back, sighs, and then he helps Isla pick a path through the cards. “Pick up two cards, Is.”

“She can't count, Harry,” Blair points out, twisting so she's lying on her stomach and helping guide Isla’s hands to cards. They pick up one, a cow, and then another, a horse. Blair shakes her head in exaggerated disappointment. “Next time, Is,” she promises.

“We’ll see,” Harry drawls, turning over a sheep and then another sheep. Blair laughs at the look of surprise that flashes across his face before he tries to pretend he knew it was going to happen. He takes another turn, coming up short when he turns the cards without letting anyone else see them, making a show of sighing and throwing his head back in defeat, but at Isla’s next shot he helps her pick up the same cards he just chose, a laugh bursting out of him at Isla’s bubble of glee at the matching cows.

Not to think too much of her past life and make introspective comments but lying here in her living room, a garden of blankets surrounding her and Blair’s heart clinging on to that one burst of joy that exploded from her husband there, as bad as things may be at the moment, Blair’s glad that this is where she is, and that she can lie here and make stupid choices and make smart choices and take a few days out of her growing empire because she’s married and the people she loves need her. Overwhelmed slightly by this sentimentality, Blair catches Harry’s hand as he moves Isla onto his knee, whispering tactics and commentary in her ear, blowing raspberries on her cheek at every other turn.

Harry turns his hand over, slides his fingers through hers, and that’s how they sit, however awkwardly it makes them bend their arms to reach the cards. His skin is hot, palm almost clammy, but the band of his ring is cool against Blair’s finger. She squeezes, makes sure he’s looking when she does because she doesn’t want to try and build up something out of words lest it shatter whatever slow recovery is going on but Harry nods and she knows he gets what he needs out of that look and that squeeze. Eight years is a long time. Blair knows how to read him and as much as she used to think she wanted to be unknowable, there’s a safety and a comfort in knowing he’s the same with her.

The game goes on much the same way as it began -- Blair can only suspect Harry’s doing some sort of magic on the cards and tricked the deck going by the way he picks up pair after pair. Soon, though, he has Isla crowing about lucky girls and winners. Blair would make a fuss about being ganged up on with her pitiful pile beside her of cats and chickens but Harry takes a short victory lap of the playing field with Isla on his back and Blair fumbles for her phone and takes a picture.

With the things she’s gone through in the too-wild world of the Upper East Side, Blair’s not naive, she’s not stupid, but that love thing complicates things. She knows that PTSD and nightmares are a reality in their lives and that Harry’s past is something she’s never going to fully know, not the way those who lived through the war do; she’s read about the horrors and listened to her friends talk about them, but she knows she doesn’t fully understand what happened to Harry, what made him the person he is. She knows that her funny, kind husband is a miraculous result of a broken childhood and a shitload of pain and that even though he’s happy much more often than she is, that he sings in the shower and cooks as much as he can, full of stories from the team and from whoever he ran in to, be that in England or New York, that there’s a whole other layer there that’s triggered by small things, by late nights and bumps in the dark, hands searching for Blair in the bed as he’s halfway to his feet for Isla. Blair knows that that part makes up so much of him and that the attack by the man in the crowd has left him disjointed, antsy, and scared, and that an afternoon of laughing with his daughter isn’t going to make things suddenly better. She knows all of this but Blair’s heart has always been much bigger than she lets on to be and her stupid optimistic heart can’t help but be disappointed when things don’t go back to normal.

“I don’t want to think about it again,” he says, late into the night. Blair’s sure he thinks she’s sleeping but she doesn’t want to deceive him so she sniffs, moves against him, just enough so he knows she’s listening. “I don’t want to go back to the person I was before.”

Blair knows that Harry has changed immensely since they met, even without knowing the Harry from before. She remembers the way he had bent over on the marina in Italy as though he was escaping everything he’d known and he couldn’t have stayed a second longer. As much as she would like to she knows she can’t credit herself in particular being the person who gave him a break and allowed him to see outside the community that called him a hero, that anyone at all who didn’t know his face and his scar and his story would be enough, but she knows that he changed her too, and so she likes to think she’s played a big enough part to be significant.

But she knows that this Harry, her Harry, has a perspective on the past and on the war that the old one doesn’t, and that the attack at the match had opened the gates and hauled the old one back in. Now he’s back in the mindset of danger and power and those too weak to defend themselves and all they can do is make him feel safe and wait it out.

Blair takes the hand around her waist and holds it, closing her eyes again once she feels a soft kiss on her shoulder and Harry’s breathing slowly evens out.

They settle for movies the next evening; not to the most productive of things but Harry shows interest and Blair takes that with both hands. They pile their growing supply of blankets and pillows on to the couch. Blair tucks Isla in beside her in a soft throw she swears they didn’t have yesterday, a pattern of the Tornados symbol interspersed with red lions and multi-coloured unicorns raises her suspicions but when she arches an eyebrow at Harry he’s staring at the television.

Isla likes anything with a lot of colours and animals so after a while of scrolling they settle for Rise of the Guardians. She wriggles and makes a lot of happy noises, occasionally reciting parts of Jack Frost’s speech, squealing when the Sandman saves the day. She seems content when that one ends and The Jungle Book comes on next. Blair doesn’t mind this one so much either -- Bagheera’s always been a favourite. At the elephant march Harry mimics the roar of their trunks which startles Isla and then has her giggling into Blair’s neck. Blair still remembers all the words to the songs.

Too many songs and singing animals later, Blair wakes up with her head on Harry’s shoulder, drool on his hoodie, and the room dark around her. Straining her eyes she finds the clock on the wall that tells her it’s almost two in the morning. “Isla,” she murmurs, wiping her mouth and making to sit up.

Harry’s shoulder shifts and his arm comes up around her. “Bed,” he mumbles.

When Blair twists her neck she can see Harry still staring at the screen, barely moved from the position he was in when they started the first movie. His eyes are glassy, he’s not watching whatever’s playing, but Blair takes a minute to work out the movie -- Zodiac is a good film but it doesn’t fit the current mood; she dislodges the remote from Harry’s lap and clicks the screen off.

Without the low buzz of actors talking fast the room feels too quiet. Harry still won’t look at her. Blair allows her head to drop back onto his arm to wait him out.

“It keeps playing over and over again in my mind,” he whispers, voice gravelly. “What if they had got you or Isla? What if there was someone else in the crowd? What if there’s more?”

“You think I haven’t thought these things?”

“Of course you have but it’s my --” he breaks off. “I wasn’t quick enough.”

“Harry, no one could’ve been faster.”

“I put you in that position -- what was I thinking, choosing a high profile career like that?”

“And Auror wasn't conspicuous, was it?” Blair is tired of this conversation. She can’t go over how things might have gone. They got the lucky path, the successful ending, but she’s still waiting for it to feel like it. “Harry, it’s been twelve years.”

Blair feels him break, his shoulders slumping. Now she raises her head, sits up properly. She maneuvers herself into his lap, her legs stretching along the couch. Her hand cards through his hair, gently pulling him so he’s leaning on her, head against her chest. “When I married you,” she says softly, “this is what I signed up for. I knew about your past, your danger, your compassion for the world, and I stood up there and said my vows.”

“This isn’t what you asked for.”

“You know how I feel about love, Harry, and about life, and everything in between. You know that you’re it for me, whatever way you are.”

When they say these big sweeping statements like this, one of them usually cracks a joke, frames the moment as something a little less than what it is because they can’t take the words for what they’re worth, but at Blair’s words Harry mumbles back a reply that is half-muffled by Blair’s neck, and it doesn’t make her laugh but it’s a long way from despair and so she smiles. “You’re it for me too. You’re worth everything else.”

“Let’s go to bed, okay?”

At Harry’s tired nod Blair gets to her feet, her hand gently leading Harry through into their bedroom. She takes off his hoodie, removes his glasses, and guides him into bed before folding herself in against him, her sweatpants and jumper a heap on the floor.

“Thank you, Blair,” Harry breathes. “For taking care of me.”

“I love you,” she says, because that’s all there is. “I just want you to get better.”

“I’m almost there,” he replies. “I promise,” which isn’t something you can bet on but Blair goes for it anyway.

She kisses his chest, burrows her hands at his sides, and wishes for the morning.  

 

 


End file.
